


How Blest Am I In This Discovering

by onstraysod



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Established Relationship, Lust, M/M, One Shot, Pining, when routine naval recordkeeping leads to inappropriate thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 00:52:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17254565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onstraysod/pseuds/onstraysod
Summary: There were so many things Edward wanted to express, so much he wished Jopson to know.While writing in his log, Edward Little fantasizes about describing a particular kind of exploration.Written for the12 Days of Carnivaleprompt, "By candlelight."





	How Blest Am I In This Discovering

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from John Donne's "To His Mistress Going to Bed."

He spent more time on his logbook now. Every evening, after retiring to his cabin, Edward sat for several hours, hunched over his cramped desk, dipping pen into inkwell, dragging nib listlessly across paper. Aside from the main log which the captain kept, each of the commissioned officers had been instructed to keep their own, to fill its pages with their unique observations of each day’s events, so that Sir John - when the time came to write a narrative of the successful expedition - would be able to describe the journey from every possible angle. No doubt John Murray, warm in his offices back in Albemarle Street, had already planned the frontispiece, already arranged for a cartographer to sketch their discoveries into the existing charts. If only there were a way for Sir John to send his narrative back to London from the ice-bound ships, Murray could have the account of their journey selling in every bookstore before they sailed back up the Thames.

Wind speed and direction, lowest and highest temperatures, the appearance of the aurora, the general health of the crew: this was the stuff of Edward Little’s account, dry facts and figures being repeated in Hodgson’s and Irving’s logbooks, recorded yet again in the captain’s fine slanting script. There was nothing original in the phrases Edward used to relate them, nor in the way he moved his pen to shape the words. No career as a novelist or newspaperman lay in his future. He applied himself to the work for the sheer occupation of it, an engagement of both body and mind that left no leisure for one to grow tense or the other to wander. He could not afford to let either off the rein. There was comfort in keeping busy, in the slight physical exertion of it: fingers wrapped tightly around pen, left palm pressed to the smooth paper. The wool of his greatcoat pulled tight across his shoulders as he bent over his work, constraining him, the way a woman’s corset kept her still, her movements small and safe. His gaze trailed his pen across the page, black ink unspooling against white foolscap, looping lines forming words, words forming meaning, inelegant but sensible. And his mind turned back the day like a clock wound backwards, recalling each watch, each mess, each meeting; recalling each order barked out in a cloud of frozen breath, each moment of satisfaction when it was briskly followed, each stab of irritation when it wasn’t. He recalled the faces in line at inspection, their ruddy cheeks, stubborn cowlicks, and neckcloths sloppily tied; he could list the names of those passed and the names of those condemned to extra duty.

His hand moved ever starboard, filling each page as the single candle on his desk burned lower, its flame dancing in a draft that numbed the tip of his nose, the edges of his ears. The pinch of the cold kept him awake, held him to his duty until the course of the day was set down, duller even to read than it had been to write. Glancing back over what he’d written, the strings of his sentences slanting sometimes up, sometimes down, like ropes in the rigging, Edward read not his words but what lay in the spaces in between. And all his work of distraction dissolved along with the chill in his skin, replaced by a heavy, annihilating heat.

If given the liberty of his subject Edward knew he could find a poet’s vocabulary inside him, could tie knots in sentences as elaborate as those he worked in rope. Oh, but he could write reams if the Admiralty wouldn’t court martial him for it, could fill volumes with sentiments that would curl the hair of the most dissipated lord. If he could place pen to paper to describe a pair of eyes the color of the Mediterranean under a summer sun, full lips soft as velvet and shapely hands as skilled at touch as mending, he could form the words from pure passion and pour himself whole onto the page.

His log of each days’s doings would read very differently then. There would be nothing in it of the Arctic cold, no lingering touch of ice in the sentiment of word or phrase. Heat would drip from every letter, steam rise from each stroke of the pen, curling up to condense as perspiration on the reader’s brow, physical proof of the desperation of a man in love. His account of the expedition would contain no recitation of inspections, unless it be the slow inspection of Thomas Jopson’s willing mouth; no measurements, lest it be how many strokes of Edward’s hand it took to bring the steward to release. The exploration of uncharted lands would be an afterthought to Edward’s mapping of Jopson’s body, an endeavor in which he made steady progress, filling in new details each day of the paradise he moved over with rapt fascination. Every sense was employed in this faithful recording of terrain: he canvassed each rigid height and yielding hollow, followed each seam of bone and muscle, and luxuriated in the streams of desire that concluded every journey. Edward had come to know them all but, uncertain of his memory, he revisited the same landmarks again and again: lingering when he could, and planning his return before even surrendering the ground he’d conquered.

If he wrote a truthful and uncensored account of each day. Edward would tell the Lords of the Admiralty of a hundred surreptitious glances exchanged over the ladling of soup and the pouring of ale. Of fingers sliding against knuckles as one man left the mess and the other entered. Of bodies pressed, as if by accident, in narrow passageways, hands slipping beneath coats, sliding over trouser buttons, the briefest of touches to keep the despair of need at bay. Of moments left alone in the captain’s cabin, when passion overpowered risk and mouths came together, tongues grazing jawlines, teeth nipping at earlobes. In great cabin or passageway, in leaving or entering the mess, a few words might be whispered, promises of later acts to keep the blood running warm.

_I need you_

_I’ll have you_

_Tonight_

_Yes_

If the lords would care to learn of it, Edward could tell them what desire did to a man when it was kept pent-up, a prisoner to prejudice and naval discipline. How in the same room with the object of his longing, he sometimes found his hand shaking so badly he had to make a fist to keep it still. The strain of maintaining a placid expression while his heart beat like a hummingbird’s wings beneath wool and brass buttons felt like it would tear him in two. The wanting was a permanent ache behind his eyes, beneath his rib cage, and when his thoughts fell too easily into a reverie on stolen moments in shadowed alcoves, the guilt of it made him startle at sudden sounds. He regarded every set of eyes turned upon him with suspicion, as if they might guess the contents of his mind. More miserable than the man laying in sick bay with fever, Edward sweat and trembled by turns, desperate for more air than his lungs could let in. Sleep was elusive, and when it did come the dreams of his exhaustion were a fresh torment of tangled limbs and discovery. Night after night he sought in his bunk the only solace the Articles afforded, and he spent like a boy fresh come to manhood, laying awake until fantasy and quickened blood made him hard again.

But just so the Lords could truly understand it, so they might appreciate how passion would always break its bonds, Edward could give them a description of those times left discreetly unrecorded in his staid log of days. He could tell them of the oppressive cold in the captain’s storeroom, of how quickly the chill dissipated from flesh and mind once Jopson’s trousers were down, his firm, bare buttocks pressed flush to Edward’s naked groin. The way the boards creaked beneath them as they rocked in tandem, how their panted breath left veils of condensation on the glass bottles aligned on a near shelf. He could relate how his moans were muffled, mouth pressed to the fabric of the steward’s coat, and how Jopson’s lip bled sometimes afterwards, casualty of a bitten-off cry.

Then he could paint for the Lords a picture of his own narrow cabin in the dead of night, a candle left burning to guide Jopson when he crept inside. With perfect clarity he could recount how the flickering illumination moved in bands of shadow across Jopson’s stomach when Edward pushed up his shirt, just far enough to mouth warm skin and scattered black hairs. The buttons on the steward’s trousers glinted beneath Edward’s fingers; the candlelight danced over tender skin blushed red and swollen full. How it gleamed like the aurora in those turquoise eyes, blown wide with arousal, stealing Edward’s breath. For the Lords’ elucidation, he could describe the wild abandon with which they moved against each other, stoking a fiery friction, rigid flesh against rigid flesh, and how warm and peaceful a nest they formed afterwards of their entangled bodies, Jopson’s head pillowed on Edward’s shoulder, their heartbeats keeping time.

Let the Lords of the Admiralty point to any gap left unaccounted in Edward’s logbook, and he could recall its occupations. The dog watch in the passageway when Jopson had slid the mittens from Edward’s cold-benumbed hands, brought them to his lips, and sucked the life back into every finger. The time between three bells and four, when alone in the mess, he’d bitten softly into the back of Jopson’s neck as the other man, bent over the table, spilled across the pattern of blue flowers on a clean china plate. The moment, just before the second watch, when he’d merely clapped his hand to the steward’s shoulder in passing, and heard the breath leave Jopson’s lips in a longing sigh. He could tell the Lords of all the lesser moments in between, when his pulse redoubled at the sound of Jopson’s voice, or when the polite smile a petty officer was free to offer a lieutenant set his flesh throbbing. Of hands briefly clasped and squeezed, of weight placed on innocuous words, of a tiny heart sewn inside a mended shirt in red thread.

But of course Edward would write none of this. For even if spared the flail or the noose, those stodgy lords wouldn’t understand it. No one could. The intensity of this passion was his alone, to thrill or ache with, a fire in his breast that made him feel alive even as it consumed him.

Staring at the next fresh page in his logbook, stretched white and clean as a bedsheet, Edward reloaded the nib with ink and set it against the paper. He moved his hand and filled line after line with the same word, a flourish at the base of the “T,” another at the end of the “s.” 

_Thomas Thomas Thomas_

Edward would write none of what he wished to, would elaborate none of the activities excised from his log, for he had not the skill to put into words the immensity of what he wished to say. His lover’s name alone would have to describe it all.

The soft slide of his cabin door brought Edward to his feet. He tore the page filled with Jopson’s name from the log as he turned, wadding it up in his hand. The light of the candle caught in his visitor’s bright eyes as he drew the door closed behind him.

“Thomas.”

There were so many things Edward wanted to express, so much he wished Jopson to know. How his life before seemed to belong to a different, colorless world. How his existence now was measured by minutes separating the last kiss from the next. How the thought of home, of escaping the ice - the dreams that sustained the other men - paled in comparison to the present, the incomparable happiness he’d found in this frozen hell.

Maybe the words for his feelings didn’t exist in any language he yet knew. Or maybe he just couldn’t say them. Edward was not a man adept at clever speech, not someone for whom phrases were playthings to be lightly tossed about.

Fortunately his tongue had other talents.

He crossed the few feet of cabin and grasped Jopson’s face, pulling the other man to him. He’d thirsted and now he drank, taking his fill and giving no quarter, his tongue plumbing the warm depths of Jopson’s mouth, an ocean to drown in. The steward whimpered - with surprise or pleasure - and grasped the lapels of Edward’s coat, returning the lieutenant’s kiss with unbridled greed. In the close press of their embrace there was no disguising the urgency of their mutual need.

Coats were abandoned on the floor, fingers fumbled with trouser buttons. Gasps and quiet moans filled the spaces between kisses, those brief moments when mouths met at different angles. They wedged themselves into the bunk, Edward pulling Jopson atop him, their hands edging downward, seeking heat. The steward licked at the shallow cleft in Edward’s chin before nuzzling his face against the lieutenant’s throat, breathing rapidly as grasps tightened and strokes quickened. Hips bucked and stars showered across Edward’s field of vision, painting the darkness with streaks of color. He fell, and Jopson after him, into blissful disintegration, gasping each other’s names against the nearest bared flesh.

Had the Lords of the Admiralty wished for a full and detailed report of captain’s steward Thomas Jopson, Edward could have supplied it. He could have described the smell of the man’s skin, soap and shaving foam mixing with Jopson’s natural scent. He could have written of the silken touch of Jopson’s hair against his mouth and between his fingers, or the way it felt to softly suckle those perfectly drawn lips. He could have gone on for pages about the little cleft at the end of Jopson’s nose alone. If musical notation could have captured it, he might have composed a symphony of the lovely sounds Jopson made as Edward traced his thumb along the length of the steward’s arousal.

“Thomas,” he murmured against the other man’s mouth, their brows pressed, damp with sweat and lingering heat. “There’s so much I want to tell you, but when I try to find the words…”

“There’s no need.” Jopson’s fingers brushed the hair back from Edward’s eyes. “We understand each other perfectly.”


End file.
